They don’t react, so I keep going.
“I mean, yoga isn’t really my specialty — I’m more of a barre gal, myself — but she covered for me this summer when I had a seriously intense case of food poisoning and couldn’t lift my head from the toilet bowl, let alone lead a class of bored housewives through rigorous choreography, so I figured I owed her one.”
The men glance at each other dubiously.
Are they buying this bullshit?
“Uh. So. What is it you want from her?” I ask, dragging their attention back to me. “I’d be happy to pass along a message from you…”
For a long, suspended moment they both just stare at me. I worry they’ve seen straight through my little white lies —okay, so they aren’t all that little, sue me— until Righty finally opens his thin-lipped mouth and grunts.
“Tell her we’re looking for her husband.”
“And that we’ll be back,” Lefty adds, still eyeing me suspiciously.
Hoping my face hasn’t gone pale, I give a small nod.
The men turn in tandem and head for the exit. It’s not until the door swings shut behind them, leaving me alone in the small, silent studio, that I realize my hand is curled tight around a five-pound free weight, every knuckle pale with tension.
I blow out a long, shuddering breath.
Namaste, indeed.
* * *
You’re probably wonderingwhy I’m not exactlyshockedby the sudden appearance of two armed gunman looking for my ex-husband. Err…soon-to-beex-husband. Once the jerk agrees to sign the damn divorce papers I served him, that is.
The answer to your question — and, perhaps not so coincidentally, the answer to everyotherquestion concerning strange encounters with scary dudes in bad suits that have cropped up over the course of my life — is just another four-letter word.
Paul.
When I met him, I was an eighteen-year-old graphic design student at a small liberal arts college just outside the city, instantly infatuated with the TA of her mandatory Economics 101 class. Well-mannered and well-dressed, Paul was a few years older — and a few lightyears more confident — than any of the unrequited crushes I’d set my teenage sights on back in high school.
So, imagine my surprise when he made a point to talk to me after class one day. When he requested to meet privately to discuss my end-of-semester project. When he laughed at my jokes and smiled like I was the most adorable thing he’d ever set eyes on. When he asked me out on a real, actual date with real, actual candlelight and a real, actual kiss at my dormitory door when the night came to an end.
Me.
The awkward freshman, still attempting to shed her last layer of baby fat, whose love life until that point was about as passion-filled as a documentary on three-toed sloths. I was, in so many ways, just a girl. I didn’t know how to dress properly or highlight my hair to flatter my skin-tone or apply eye makeup that didn’t resemble a music video from the early ‘90s. (Hello, turquoise eyeshadow.) I didn’t understand what falling for a man like Paul would mean for my future.
And yet… I didn’t stand a snow cone’s chance in hell at resisting him.
We were living together off-campus by the time I was a sophomore, married the month I graduated, and settled firmly in the house Paul bought for us before my first student loan payment came due. And, for a while, things were good. Or, at least to me — a girl with exactlyzeroother relationship experience to compare it to — thingsseemedgood.
Good enough.
Paul was making great money as a financial consultant at a big Boston firm. I kept myself busy with freelance graphic design projects, despite my new husband’s insistence that I didn’t need to work.
Just take care of the house, baby.
Be home waiting every night, baby.
Have dinner ready on the table, baby.
I don’t want you too busy for me, baby.
His gentle suggestions became increasingly demanding — and increasingly stifling — as the first years of our marriage passed us by. Slowly, at first. Then, so fast it was like I’d blinked my eyes and missed a whole half-decade of existence.
The blushing twenty-two-year-old bride was long gone, and with her the majority of my twenties. By the time I snapped out of my stupor and recognized what had become not just of my marriage, but of me,Shelby, a woman with dreams and aspirations outside the shackles of matrimony… I was twenty-eight years old and essentially a stranger to myself.